Commentary by a Jungian Annalyst

A major problem I encounter at the outset of writing a commentary on these two sessions is trying to decide at what level the therapist is working.

If what is being attempted is what might loosely be called supportive therapy - trying to enable the patient to feel better about herself without trying to dig too deep, then I have a picture of a sensitive therapist doing a good job. If, on the other hand, what is being attempted is work of analytical depth, I confess I feel less sure of what is being achieved in the two sessions presented.

It looks as if the patient may be someone with quite deep-rooted problems of dependency which are probably related to a severe identity problem. The presenting problem of the dependent relationship with the boyfriend sounds like the symbiotic merging so commonly found where the early bond with the mother was not properly established. Possibly, as an effect of the two miscarriages, the mother was depressed and saw the patient as if she were dead or, in some other way, could not see her as a person in her own right.

To add insult to injury, the poor girl had to suffer early hospitalisations and surgery with further interference of the mother-infant relationship.

A very tough start to life and one which has clearly left its scars. However, this is only one side of things - the external side or what is somewhat misleadingly referred to as the historical background.

But the central issue of analytical work is how the patient has responded to these experiences. What makes up her inner world to which these childhood experiences are only some of the contributory factors? Jung wrote in 1934: ‘The true reason for neurosis lies in the present … it is fed and as it were new-made every day. And it is only in the today, not in our yesterdays, that the neurosis can be “cured”’ (p. 171).

One of the main ways of doing this is working with the transference, which I understand to mean taking all the communications of the patient, whatever their conscious